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RADLEY

I flew north, leaving the city lights behind me, while in front, the mountains were dark shapes against the moonlit sky.

My dragon and I both enjoyed the freedom of him taking his wings and flying. He enjoyed the bracing cold air rushing over his wings, plus there were no roofs to dodge and no one underneath he had to avoid. He stopped grieving when he was flying, and I could forget my day-to-day life while I was inside him. For a couple of hours, we were alone and going nowhere in particular.

But when the sky began to turn gray on the horizon, we had to turn back. Though the residents of Moonridge Place were shifters, none of them were scaly beasts with a large wingspan, and they sometimes took fright if they witnessed him taking his scales in the woods. But it was humans who forced us to only fly at night. Mythical beasts soaring through the air beside a plane or landing on a school football field would have historians, politicians, and anthropologists rewriting history. And the world would be in an uproar.

Not being able to take my skin near the building where I lived annoyed me. Unlike the other shifters in Moonridge Place, my dragon was too big, too scary, and just too much to shift behind a bush or a bunch of trees. Instead, I shifted in the woods on the edge of town and drove home.

After putting the key in the lock and opening the apartment door, I ran my eyes over my possessions. None of them were worth anything, but that was the little I’d collected since I arrived here after I’d been shamed and forced to leave my flight. Kicked out was a better expression. Not only did I lose family, friends, and the protection of the flight, but I wasn’t allowed to bring my hoard with me.

I’d started collecting again as soon as I arrived in Moonridge Place, but it was my beast’s obsession rather than mine, because a dragon’s DNA was primed to create a hoard. The shelves filled up with chipped charity shop mugs, a one-legged tin soldier, and forty paperbacks I hadn’t read and probably would never get around to reading.

I picked up the blue marble that Indigo from next door had pushed into my palm the first week here. It was hard and sparkly, and my beast guarded it more than anything else on the shelf. Being a bear shifter, Indigo understood hoarding food, so she must have sensed I needed something for my collection.

My dragon still wanted a nest that our eventual mate would use, so in the corner of the living room was pile of secondhand cushions and blankets that weren’t used for anything else other than for him to look at and me to occasionally sit on so my beast could pretend we were in the wild, hunkered down in a dark cave.

I swiveled my head to an unopened letter on the kitchen counter. There was no need to turn it over and see the crest stamped on the flap that I knew was there. The only reason the flight would write was about my leaving, and the letter was them putting it in writing. I didn’t need to read it to know what it said.

Before I left, they’d told me they were going easy. They could have scarred me more, or clipped my beast’s wings. A dragon with scars couldn’t mate, that was flight law and one of the original set down centuries ago. A mate wanted a protector who could keep a nest whole, and I’d let someone get their claws into me from my chest to my jaw.

That day, my dragon had taken his wings, but his sharp eyesight had picked out a dragon who wasn’t from our flight standing over a clutch of eggs that didn’t belong to him. My beast had swooped down to chase him off with the priority being to protect the eggs. And he did, but the other beast swiped him with his razor-sharp talons, leaving my dragon and me scarred.

A knock at my apartment door brought me back to the present and saved me from thinking about the letter. There were three fast raps low down on the door, and I knew who it was before I opened it.

Indigo stood in the hall with a juice box and her shoes on the wrong feet which told me she’d done a partial shift in an awkward situation and had to get out of there fast.

“Radley, Dad says you’re coming to Sunday dinner. Miles is making his special potatoes and there’ll be tons.”

“Not this week.”

She sighed. “You said that last week,” and she stepped into the apartment. “Oh you have a new mug since I was here last.”

“Mmmm.”

“Dad says you’re a hoarder but in a nice, dragon-y way, not because you have issues.”

My beast and I had issues that led from here to the parking lot, but I just smiled.

Indigo picked up the toy soldier and examined his one leg. She did that every time she visited as if she expected me to fix it. She moved along the shelf, picking up and putting down items until she reached the blue marble.

“You kept it.” She grinned and held it to her chest.

“Of course I did. You gave it to me.”

“It’s the best one I owned because it has the swirl.” She held it up to the window, checking the shades of blue before returning it to the shelf. “I’m glad I gave it to you.”

Me too, my dragon said.

I told her both me and my beast adored that marble, and she glanced up.

“Do your shoulder and neck hurt?” she asked.

My scar zigzagged over my chest, shoulder, and peeked over the edge of my jaw. I ran my finger over the ragged tip, something I did often.

“Not anymore.”